4/11/10

I could have sworn we'd covered this already

Melody showed me last night that we have not yet covered all aspect of race relations in a publicly humiliating forum, that we had more ground to cover. We went to the wedding of a church friend last night. The bride moved here from Nigeria about five years ago and it has been so neat to get to know her. Her husband is from England and we had not met him before the wedding.

Melody sits through the entire wedding. By 'sits' I mean flops, lies, clings, whimpers and flips.

At the end, they are coming down the aisle and everyone is so happy for them. After they pass by and the music stops and everything is quiet, Melody asks, "MOM! Did a white man just marry a black woman?"

Thanks, thanks kid.

She goes on to say, "I knew they could be friends, but I didn't know they could MARRY. I thought white people were supposed to marry white people."

I began to think of all the friends we have and, while we have a lot of friends from different cultures and ethnicities, I could think of only two inter-racial couples, and only one interracial couple they're around much.

I told her, "Even though we may look different on the outside, God made us all the same. We're all His children, all equal. Anyone can marry anyone who wants to marry them. Someday, when they're bigger, Charlie could marry Lydia."

She thinks about this and comes back with, "Yeah, well he'd have to stop hitting her first."

5 comments:

KStarr said...

Small steps. (Take that however you want.)

Becky at "Cheese My Head" said...

um. yeah. Jonah (just turned 4) was playing with a hispanic kid in the pediatrician's waiting room several months ago. Jonah shut the kid out of the playhouse and said loudly, "only white people allowed."

I. Was. Mortified.

Unknown said...

This was a very interesting post. Funny how a kid's take on it can seem so awful, even though it's easy to forget that the comment is more than likely innocent-I also think it's interesting when they really tell you what's going on inside those mysterious little brains!

Lori said...

I had to have a similar talk with my niece. Awkward!

Alisha said...

hehehehe
(I can laugh because I probably won't have kids til I'm 50 so then I won't be able to hear what they say)